One tree to rule them all

Being a systematist in the 21st century is a challenge. A systematist needs to be a field biologist, and understand the ecology, evolution, and behavior of their study organism. A systematist needs to be a molecular biologist or anatomist and understand the characters from which they will estimate their phylogenetic tree. And a systematist needs to be a statistician and understand mathematically sophisticated methods for inferring that tree. There is an overwhelming amount of literature to read in pursuit of being a modern biologist. Species tree inference: a guide to methods and applications is a welcome guidepost for researchers wanting to estimate phylogenetic trees from multilocus data. Across the 14 chapters of the book, researchers can learn about the major categories of methods for inferring species trees, how they work, and what can be done with these trees once estimated.